Thursday, January 19, 2012

Just 45 years ago, 16 states deemed marriages between two people of different races illegal.

But in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court considered the case of Richard Perry Loving, who was white, and his wife, Mildred Loving, of African American and Native American descent.

The case changed history - and was captured on film by LIFE photographer Grey Villet, whose black-and-white photographs are now set to go on display at the International Center of Photography.

Follow the link to see some of the beautiful photos of this brave family.

For a 31-year-old like myself, it's hard to comprehend that my parents grew up in a world in which people of different races weren't allowed to marry. I hope that my children will be able to say the same of a world in which same-sex couples were denied the same privilege.

It's another reminder of just how much progress has been made in the last half century on social issues. Social conservatives feel the acute sting of their defeats in this arena, which has done more than anything to accentuate culture wars and partisan divides in America.

Those culture wars in turn have been easy prey for the plutocrats in reversing the ground won by the New Deal and the Great Society. Reaganism would never have gotten off the ground without the cultural resentment of Nixonland.

Has it been worth the price? I would say so. Changes to economic structures can happen quickly, often with a single stroke of a pen. Social changes take much longer, require more effort, and cannot be pronounced through fiat legislation.

Hard-won gains in the culture wars may have been an inadvertent cause of the dark economic period in which we find ourselves. But this time, when we do take back our economic future from the plutocrats, we'll be able to do it for all our citizens, not just the straight white males.